Conspiracy theories from the media about TikTok continue to flood the zone on the leadup to a Supreme Court decision.
If there is one thing in technology that the mainstream media hates in general, it’s, well, the internet as a whole. Within the internet, however, it’s social media that has gotten a lions share of the mainstream media’s attention with waves upon waves of hit pieces that are clearly showcasing the authors being completely full of shit. When confronted with the facts, however, the mainstream media simply chooses to double down and dismiss all valid criticism as “disinformation”.
Funny thing, though. While they have been doing this, those same mainstream media outlets will also sometimes wring their hands over why so few people trust them afterwards. In their efforts to blame social media for pretty much every societal ill they can come up with, they decide to simply lather, rinse, repeat, and blame social media for people not trusting them. In their heads, this makes sense because they’re perfect in every way. Are they really so out of touch? No! It’s social media that’s at fault here!
In a way, it’s actually kind of ironic how much the mainstream media wrings their hands about disinformation and misinformation. At the same time, one of the biggest sources of said disinformation and misinformation tends to come from the mainstream media outlets themselves. One great example involves the TikTok debate. The conspiracy theory involving TikTok, as pushed by government and the mainstream media, is that the platform is somehow this Chinese government mind controlling device designed to sway people to do the bidding of the Chinese government. This by collecting huge amounts of information from its user base as the algorithms better understand how you like checks notes funny cat video’s. They also apparently hijack your webcam and microphone to spy in on your rooms as well. I wish I was exaggerating, but that’s what they really belief, laughable as it may be.
Of course, all of that is very wordy and makes them sound crazy, so very frequently, the mainstream media condenses the description down to “security concerns” or “privacy concerns”. Keeping it vague and simple makes it harder for the reader to question where all of this is coming from and the mainstream media has chosen this tactic to fool their readers moving forward.
Notably, however, no one has ever really presented any kind of evidence to back up these wild claims. Obviously, the security community has poked and prodded the platform and it’s respective app to see if there is something that they missed somewhere along the line. The results, however, was that the app doesn’t do anything outside of the norm for your average social media platform. If there was an actual unique threat TikTok presented, then the security and privacy community would’ve picked up on that a long time ago.
So, with a complete lack of evidence, the security establishment had the opportunity to explain to the American people what they found that makes TikTok a unique privacy and security risk before Congress. Finally, some clarity on what the heck they are even talking about, right? Wrong! When asked, the security government establishment responded by admitting that they got nothing. Instead, they were just spitballing and speculating on hypotheticals. This should’ve killed the conspiracy theories altogether, right there. Unless some smoking gun can be found that overrides all of the above, then just let this whole conspiracy theory nutjobbery die out already.
For the mainstream media, however, they never met a conspiracy theory about social media they didn’t want to run with. So, despite the complete lack of evidence, they chose to double down and say that it’s all in the name of protecting people’s personal privacy. The obvious response to that is that if the government really cared about people’s privacy, then there would be a push for broad federal level privacy reform. The mainstream media’s response to that? Wrong answer! That’s an actual solution that would potentially deliver tangible results to real problems – and that’s the last thing they want!
So what does the media do in response to all of this? Double down again on the conspiracy theories. This in the leadup to a Supreme Court decision deciding whether or not to ban the app altogether. One of the sources pushing these nutjob conspiracy theories is the Free Press that puts it directly in the headline, screaming about how “TikTok Brainwashed America’s Youth“:
A preliminary version of the study was released in August and “faced significant pushback,” according to Joel Finkelstein, director and chief science officer at NCRI. The updated study has “twice as much evidence,” he said, and will be published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Social Psychology. “It is now the first peer-reviewed, data-driven study to establish that TikTok is actively manipulating perceptions of China and the Chinese Communist Party through algorithmic bias.”
Is it going to get peer reviewed or is it already peer reviewed? Sounds like it’s the former because that’s a pretty significant difference. The report gets even more hilarious from there:
The report presents TikTok as an example of the “persuasive technologies” China is developing to shape public opinion in the West. Another major conclusion of the report, based on online polling, found that the more time users spent on TikTok, the more positively they viewed China’s human rights record and its desirability as a travel destination.
“This scaled indoctrination isn’t hypothetical. It’s real,” Finkelstein told The Free Press. “I think that the Supreme Court hearing now isn’t about whether or not we’re dealing with a hypothetical threat. The Supreme Court hearing is about whether we’re going to allow this continued indoctrination.”
Yup, it’s so obvious and so persuasive, we aren’t going to share any of the statistics we gathered in the first place. You just have to take our word for it because it’s so obvious, you don’t need any evidence to be convinced of that. After all, that’s how all of this works. After all, if there is anything that is scientifically persuasive, it’s an online poll with an unknown number of respondents.
Taking their conclusions and then gathering evidence to bolster those conclusions (because that’s not a totally backwards way of doing things in the research community), then apparently created fake accounts to try and get those predetermined outcomes:
To judge how TikTok treated various topics, NCRI created fake TikTok accounts to fit the profile of American teenagers. The researchers then engaged the TikTok algorithm on issues related to the Chinese government and CCP and compared the search results to those generated by the site’s main rivals, YouTube and Instagram—which are owned by the U.S. tech giants Google and Meta, respectively.
The results, apparently, were unconvincing. Gee, I wonder why?
A TikTok spokesman strongly criticized the NCRI report and the methodology used in the study. “This flawed experiment was clearly engineered to reach a false, predetermined conclusion,” he told The Free Press. “Previous research by NCRI has been debunked by outside analysts, and this latest paper is equally flawed. Creating fake accounts that interact with the app in a prescribed manner does not reflect real users’ experience, just as this so-called study does not reflect facts or reality.”
The report then effectively responded to that by suggesting that this just what they want you to believe.
Joking aside, though, this article is just one of the latest examples of how the media is completely and utterly disconnected from reality when covering technology related issues. Social media has become part of our cultural norms. These conspiracy theories might have some play with people who are 80 years of age or older, but as you go younger, it gets less likely that people are willing to believe them. I’ve lost count how many people who are my generation or younger who laughed hard at these conspiracy theories. It’s with good reason they are laughing: they know better.
What gets reported less is the negative impacts of a TikTok ban. This includes how this could potentially be one of the biggest job killing moves made in recent memory. What’s more, it is significantly damaging to the culture of multiple generations. For a lot of users, it’s not as easy as simply signing up for a free account on another platform and carrying on with business as usual. This is because different platforms behave differently and that might not suit everyone’s interest. All this to, what? Satisfy a xenophobic agenda? Not worth it by any stretch of the imagination.
The time for those pushing the TikTok conspiracy theories to put up or shut up has long since passed. They had ample opportunity to present a case that TikTok is a unique threat to society. They completely and utterly failed to deliver on that. I’m as open minded as they come and I was listening for any kind of evidence at all. If there is a unique threat to privacy and security that TikTok presents, I would be on the front lines waving that around. These are things that I do care about deeply. The problem is that I need evidence first. I can’t just “take your word for it” because talk is cheap. I don’t care if your a government official or one of the largest news agencies in the country. Your job is to make your case and you completely failed at what should have been a simple task if the evidence is so overwhelming. Now, we are watching people’s livelihoods and freedom of expression get placed at risk for what amounts to no good reason. It’s absurd and should not be happening.
